35 Minutes of sheer bad-assery. - 92%

I've quite often seen this band compared to fellow countrymen Demilich, which I could never decide if I fully agreed with. I won't deny there are some similarities but I've always felt Adramelech offered something quite different from their counterparts, and in fact the majority of their regional scene. Sure, I'm not contesting the brilliance of Demigod etc, but next to Sentenced these were probably my favorite old school death metal act from Finland.

I often find it hard to place a finger on just what it is about Psychostasia that makes me love it so much. I don't normally have a lot of time for death metal, however when the time arises this is exactly the kind of shit I want to hear. The fucking riffs on this album are ingenious, perfectly technical yet always remaining damn heavy, skull splitting in fact. The vocals are awesome, with quite a muddy, suffocating mix giving them an distant, almost ethereal feel. Far from the average cookie monster growls, the vocals here had more in common with the European guard.

As I stated, the production has quite a suffocating feel, yet the clarity is surprisingly good. The drums have an earthy, natural feel to them, the guitar tone is as menacing as they come and the bass just fucking rumbles around, shaking your bowels. This all adds to the dust clogged atmosphere, helped by the awesome album artwork. I wouldn't be surprised if I went out for a spot of grave robbing, only to pry open a tomb and have this album blast out in a cloud of virulent, age old debris.

Blending absolutely classic old school death metal stylings such as "The Book of the Worm" with furious bouts of technical mastery as seen in the title track, Psychostasia is just under 35 minutes of sheer bad-assery. Whilst quite hard to track down on hard copy, this is an album I'd recommend doing anything in your power to hear. Somewhat of a lost gem amongst the mighty old school Finnish death metal scene, I can happily recommend this to any serious fan of old school death metal. This is death metal how it should be and would certainly make my top 10-20 list in the genre. BFA (bad-fucking-ass)